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Mirza Malkom Khan and the Politics of Legal Reform in 19th Century Iran

In the 19th century, Iran witnessed the emergence of intellectual debates on the necessity of reforming the country’s administration, including its legal system. In a context where the empire’s independence was at risk, and local governors and notables arbitrarily exercised their power, a potential solution was found in qānun, interpreted as written and secular laws.

The Qajar empire had a legal and judicial system, though non-codified. While the existence of ʿorf (custom) has been a subject of scholarly debate,1 the ʿolama presided over shariʿa courts, especially dealing with matters of personal status. Moreover, the shah could sit in judgement over disputes, guided by the principle of what was best for the country.2 This degree of arbitrariness and uncertainty sparked a debate on legal reforms with clear political implications.

Originally, the debate was not exclusively conceived as a way to democratise the country, but rather as a tool to counter decentralising attitudes of local governors and powers, and to more effectively resist the Russian and British encroachment on the country. As a result, it drew inspiration from legal developments both in Europe and in other parts of the Muslim world, such as the Ottoman empire and Egypt, as well as local conditions. One of the initiators of this debate was the Iranian Armenian Mirza Malkom Khan, author of the pamphlet “Ketābcheh-ye Ghaibi” (Occult Booklet) or “Daftar-e Tanzimāt” (Book of Reforms), composed in 1858.

Writer and diplomat Mirza Malkom Khan (1834–1908) is considered one of the fathers of the Iranian Constitutional Revolution. Image credit: Originally uploaded by BehnamFarid, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Who was Mirza Malkom Khan?

Born in 1834 in New Julfa to an Armenian Christian family that later converted to Islam, Mirza Malkom Khan’s upbringing was shaped by his father’s close contact with Qajar officialdom. This allowed Malkom to study in France at the government’s expense. At the age of 18, he returned to Iran and worked first at the polytechnic school Dār al-Fonun as a lecturer and translator for foreign instructors, then as the personal interpreter to the sovereign and the first telegraph operator in Iran.

After writing “Ketābcheh-ye Ghaibi” and establishing the para-masonic lodge farāmushkhāneh (House of Oblivion), he left Iran, first moving to Baghdad, and then working as a diplomat in Egypt and Istanbul. In the Ottoman capital, he established contacts with Ottoman and Iranian reformists. After holding government positions in Iran for a few years, he obtained a diplomatic post in London in 1874 and remained there for two decades. During this time, his relations with the Qajar government became progressively conflictual and culminated with the publication of the oppositional newspaper Qānun in 1890, which was banned in Iran.3

Introducing the Concept of Qānun

It has been estimated that, during his life, Malkom probably wrote about 200 treatises,4 which were circulated among a small number of courtiers, princes, leading officials, and literates in Iran. In his writings, he considered qānun, interpreted as codified laws, as a necessary step to improve the conditions of the country.

Malkom first discussed this concept in his first writing, “Ketābcheh-ye Ghaibi” or “Daftar-e Tanzimāt”, composed anonymously in 1858 and transmitted to the shah via his trusted confidant Mirzā Jaʿfar Khān Moshir al-Dowleh. The pamphlet introduced the Ottoman concept of tanzimāt, literally meaning reorganisation, and aspired to similar developments in Iran. Most pertinently, Malkom also reinterpreted the general concept of qānun existing in Persian as “principle”5 and defined it as “any ordinance issued by the government, tending to the general welfare of the community and equally incumbent upon all its members”6, following the example of Ottoman legal language.

While often associated with secularity in a Western sense, in Malkom’s view, qānun was not in opposition to shariʿa. Probably out of political astuteness, Malkom never overtly deplored Islamic law, but rather conceived of it as a potential source of inspiration for the content of newly written laws.

Mirza Malkom Khan’s oppositional newspaper Qānun was banned in Iran, but found its way into the hands of politicians, merchants, and Iranian pilgrims passing through Istanbul. Image credit: میرزا ملکم خان, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Codifying Laws

Malkom’s writings not only discussed the necessity of laws but provided texts for new norms, ranging from proposals for a new institutional system to examples of codes. In his pamphlet, while not suggesting a constitutional monarchy just yet, he proposed 23 separate laws and articles that, taken together, formed a sort of basic law. However, their content appeared quite contradictory, showing a partial integration of the concept of the separation of powers, especially between the shah and the legislative chamber, called majles-e tanzimāt (chamber of reform) and tasked with the codification of laws (art. 11). This body was to compile all relevant precepts from shariʿa and the state, and draft a bill of rights, as well as criminal, military, and administrative codes, and regulations for the affairs of the government.

Actual proposals for these codes were provided in “Daftar-e qānun” (Book of Law), published in the early 1880s. Here, Malkom wrote a bill of rights that also protected against illegal imprisonment, as well as an administrative code for civil servants. Most importantly, he proposed a criminal code that was to be valid, for the first time, in the whole country (art. 1) and established the principle of nulla poena sine lege (art. 9), marking an important step towards ending arbitrariness.

Europe as an Example?

The impact of Malkom’s writings became especially visible in the 1890s, when, following increasing tensions with the Iranian government, he established a newspaper in London, whose title itself again stressed his objective: Qānun. Often regarded as “the most important and influential” publication of the reign of Naser ad-Din Shah7, Qānun was disseminated on a large geographical scale, reaching Istanbul and secretly imported into Iran.8 While data on its exact readership are not available, Qānun and its reprint were spread among politicians, merchants, and even Iranian pilgrims passing through Istanbul.9 It was not a traditional newspaper: attention to current news was scarce, and Malkom’s main concern was what he perceived to be a lack of laws.10

» Our books and the chests of our scholars are full of good laws «

The articles in the newspaper were indicative of his approach to legal reform in Iran and, in particular, three main characteristics of this process. First, having laws was necessary to avoid the destruction and oppressions that occurred in a state of arbitrariness, and therefore, every human being should ask for qānun.11 Second, qānun and shariʿa were not incompatible or separated. In his view, “our books and the chests of our scholars are full of good laws”, but they were not implemented.12

Third, European countries were not the sole source of inspiration. Certainly, since “Daftar-e Tanzimāt”, Malkom had considered European countries as examples and asked that their principles of order be applied and established in Iran without delay, either by invention or by imitation.13 However, he considered legal principles to be universally equal and also took examples from Muslim countries, stressing that in the Ottoman empire, Egypt, and among the Turkmen, “everyone knows what their rights and duties are”.14 Still, his choice to stress non-European examples appears to have been an astute, practical way to push Iran to join these countries as a response to internal and external threats.

  1. Nobuaki Kondo, Islamic Law and Society in Iran. A Social History of Qajar Tehran (Routledge, 2017), 2-4. ↩︎
  2. Ervand Abrahamian, “Oriental Despotism: The Case of Qajar Iran”, International Journal of Middle East Studies 5, no. 1 (1974), 25. ↩︎
  3. M.M. Tabātabāʿi, Majmuʻhā-ye āsār-e Mirzā Malkom Khān (Ketābkhāneh Dānesh, 1327/1948), b. ↩︎
  4. Abdul-Hadi Hairi, “The Idea of Constitutionalism in Persian Literature prior to the 1906 Revolution,” in Akten des VII. Kongresses für Arabistik und Islamwissenschaft, ed. Albert Dietrich (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht,1976), 199. ↩︎
  5. Hamid Algar, Mirza Malkum Khan: A Study in the History of Iranian Modernism (University of California Press, 1973), 29. ↩︎
  6. Tabātabāʿi, Malkom Khān, 14. ↩︎
  7. Shaul Bakhash, Iran: Monarchy, Bureaucracy and Reform under the Qajars: 1858-1896 (Ithaca Press, 1978), 396. ↩︎
  8. Ḥāfeẓ Farmānfarmāʾiān, Khāterāt-e Siyāsi Mirzā ʿAli Khān Amin al-Dowleh (Moʿasseseh-ye Enteshārāt-e Amir Kabir, 1370/1991), 139. ↩︎
  9. Sara Zanotta, “Long-Distance Constitutionalists: Trans-Imperial Mobility and Cross-Border Strategies of the Iranian Constitutional Movement (1850s-1910s)” (PhD diss., University of Pavia, 2025), 146-149; 178-179. ↩︎
  10. Qānun, n. 1, 1. ↩︎
  11. Qānun, n. 2, 2-3. ↩︎
  12. Qānun, n. 1, 2. ↩︎
  13. Tabātabāʿi, Malkom Khān, 13. ↩︎
  14. Qānun, n. 1, 1. ↩︎
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Sara Zanotta, "Mirza Malkom Khan and the Politics of Legal Reform in 19th Century Iran," ant.e, May 2026, https://ante-blog.univie.ac.at/article/mirza-malkom-khan-and-the-politics-of-legal-reform-in-19th-century-iran/
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Constitution as Method in 1880s Egypt

At the end of the 19th century, as the world shifted toward new global dynamics, regions situated within expanding imperial hierarchies were likewise confronting political reconfiguration. Compared to the instantaneity of 21st century communication, the 19th century can appear slow. However, just as ideas now spread quickly across social media, back then concepts of participation and government circulated through growing global interconnectedness.

This interconnectedness existed alongside imperial relationships that structured much of the period, with discussions of participation and legal constraint arising in imperial centers and entering territories subject to varying degrees of external control. Such discussions have often been presented purely as the introduction of Euro-American ideals of governance. But were concepts of participation and constraint on power really foreign to these settings?

At the time, Egypt was not alone in experimenting with constitutional forms, as the 1861 Tunisian constitution and later Ottoman constitutional developments similarly reflected broader regional efforts to reorganize political authority under modern imperial pressures.1 The case of Egypt provides useful insight into how local legal orders operated under such pressure.

ʿAbduh and the Legal Bodies

Muḥammad ʿAbduh (1849–1905) was an Egyptian jurist, reformist scholar, and later grand mufti of Egypt whose writings reshaped debates on Islamic law, governance, and constitutional reform in the late nineteenth century. Writing during the period of Ottoman suzerainty, European financial control, and British occupation after 1882, he intervened in debates over law, consultation, and political authority.

Muḥammad ʿAbduh (1849–1905) conceptualized a constitutional order based on dustūr (a constitution), qānūn (statutory law), and representative consultative councils (majālis al-shūrā).

Prior to becoming grand mufti of Egypt, ʿAbduh articulated a framework that the dominant historiography has long characterized as a foreign import, yet the vocabulary he deployed was reconstructed within, and authorized by, the Islamic legal tradition he inhabited. He noted that authority was to move from an absolute personal form to a consultative order, and that such order would be held in place by named fixtures: dustūr (a constitution), qānūn (statutory law), and representative consultative councils (majālis al-shūrā).2 ʿAbduh’s conceptualization produced a shūrawiyya (consultative government) based on both constitution and code.

By coupling the transformation with dustūr and qānūn, and by placing representative councils in the same line, ʿAbduh described constitutionalism as bound by both code and an internal consultative body, blending the foreign with the local. In doing so, he also established a system of authority that was constrained by a constitution, statutes, and a representative body that stood for the country. The hybridity of the system, however, was not mere synthesis. Constitutional language travels, but its authority does not travel intact, as this case shows: the constitutional language was reconstituted within the normative grammar that received it.3

Grounded in Tradition

The Qurʾān formed the foundational framework for legal thought, and ʿAbduh maintained the same constitutional approach in his interpretive analysis of the Qurʾān, specifically of chapter Āl ʿImrān (3):159:4 “…and consult them in your affairs. When you make a decision, put your trust in God; surely, God loves those who place trust in Him.” ʿAbduh’s reading did not emerge in isolation. It participated in a long exegetical debate over what the command to “consult” required of political authority. In this verse, the Prophet is commanded to seek consultation. ʿAbduh incorporated this commandment into support of his conception of action by consultation (al-ʿamal bi-l-mushāwara).

Classical legal exegesis provides more than one way to read Q 3:159 (“wa-shāwirhum fī al-amr”), and that range matters for how ʿAbduh was able to mobilize the verse as method rather than as slogan.5 His deployment of the verse operated within the established exegetical range rather than outside it. That was the key move: constitutional vocabulary did not function as an imported doctrine. Its authority was grounded in established modes of reasoning, not in its external origin.

Constitutional vocabulary did not function as an imported doctrine. Its authority was grounded in established modes of reasoning, not in its external origin.

For the ʿIrāqī Ḥanafi al-Jaṣṣāṣ (d. 981), the command to consult was to be treated as a real procedural directive, and the dispute he registered was about scope: whether consultation was confined to temporal affairs (umūr al-dunyā) or whether it also bore on religious and legal judgment.6 In other words, classical jurists already debated how far consultation extended. Jaṣṣāṣ illustrated consultation through concrete Prophetic events, specifically the battles of Badr and the ditch, as proof that mushāwara was employed as a working mechanism of leadership under pressure.7

The Andalusian (Iberian) Mālikī Ibn al-ʿArabī (d. 1148) pushed the same verse in a more restrictive direction: consultation was framed as counsel in war or policy practice, not as delegated authority over revealed rulings. Ibn al-ʿArabī explicitly identified the intended referent as “al-istishāra fī al-ḥarb” (consultation in war) and treated “al-aḥkām” (normative rulings grounded in revelation) as outside the domain of discretionary “raʾy” (discretionary forms of interpretive judgment) in this sense.8 In this locus, Badr anchored the argument as the paradigmatic site of consultation (camp-placement counsel; deliberation over captives), precisely because those were domains where tactical judgment operated and where consultation functioned as governance rather than as a source of legal normativity.9

Rather than projecting an idealized Islamic past onto these texts, ʿAbduh’s constitutional positioning, therefore, extended conversations present within Islamic discourse from classical scholarship. Both Jaṣṣāṣ and Ibn ʿArabī were influential exegetes and scholars in their respective legal traditions, and ʿAbduh’s reading of the Qurʾān approached meaning through a standard interpretive lens.

From Normative to Operational

ʿAbduh further clarified his perspective on administration in his analysis of how the canonical institution of al-Azhar should be managed. By ʿAbduh’s time, al-Azhar had stood for almost a millennium as a continuous authoritative center of Islamic learning and scholarly production, through multiple empires and dynasties. In article two of Qānūn al-Azhar, the author set out the duty of the Shaykh al-Azhar, who was tasked with regulations and the decisions of Majlis al-Idāra (Administrative Committee), and who chose the means to improve al-Azhar and managed affairs within the limits of law and council decisions. As checks on the Shaykh al-Azhar’s power, statutes and the council’s decisions remained in place as operational measures. The legal implications drew on the constraining force of articulated statute as regulatory power rather than as symbolic concession.10

ʿAbduh described dustūr as a foundational governing ordinance that functioned as an enforceable constraint on the exercise of authority rather than merely as a symbolic concession. Whether in his tripartite construction of dustūr, qānūn, and consultative councils, or in his administrative framework for managing al-Azhar through Majlis al-Idāra, ʿAbduh developed a method in which rulers were bound to a foundational governing ordinance and deliberative constraint.

The al-Azhar mosque, an authoritative center of Islamic learning and scholarly production through multiple empires and dynasties. © K.A.C. Creswell Islamic Architecture Photograph Collection; Rare Books and Special Collections Library; the American University in Cairo

Thus, the question is not whether European constitutional language appears in Egypt. It does. The question is what that language was asked to do, and what parts of the existing Islamic legal world gave it enforcement power. The answer draws not on theories added after the fact, but on the language found across the passages: transform, constrain, consult, decide, execute. The framework for transforming, constraining, and consulting was internal to ʿAbduh’s sources and the Islamic tradition he parsed. The source of this constitutional vocabulary and the structure of its application are analytically distinct.

The normative resources for constraining authority existed within Islamic legal reasoning. What was absent under conditions of despotism was their institutional binding force. ʿAbduh’s own answer, in his articles on consultation and despotism published in al-Waqāʾiʿ al-Miṣriyya in December 1881, was direct: a ruler who acted on his own opinion alone (istabadda bi-raʾyihi) could simply bypass them. Constitutional vocabulary (dustūr, qānūn, consultative council) was the means of converting internal normative principles into operational, publicly legible, enforceable governance.11

A Comparative Note

The methodological reorganization visible in Cairo was not an isolated event, and questions of constitutionality and regulatory constraint were not unique to Egypt or the Islamicate world. In Meiji Japan, such discussions of and efforts at transformative government were also underway. Much like ʿAbduh, Fukuzawa Yukichi (d. 1901) was an intellectual visionary for his nation’s future. Like ʿAbduh, he contemplated the construction and parameters of such government. In a Jiji Shimpō editorial in February 1889, Fukuzawa identified how a constitution was normally “the child of national disorder” (kokuran no ko 國亂の子).12

Roughly 10,000 km to the east, Fukuzawa Yukichi contemplated the construction and parameters of a transformative government, much like Muḥammad ʿAbduh in Cairo.

Reorganizing Authority

Egypt provides a particularly revealing case of how constitutional vocabulary was rearticulated within an existing juristic grammar under imperial constraint. A comparative analysis with Meiji Japan suggests that this methodological reorganization of authority was not unique to Cairo. Like ʿAbduh, Fukuzawa Yukichi grappled with how externally circulating constitutional forms could be used to reorganize and constrain authority within existing political and intellectual traditions.

The concepts of participation and constraint on state power were not uniquely Euro-American, nor was their application in these settings simply the product of European transmission. Constitutional vocabulary did circulate through European political discourse. What is at issue is not its origin but its operation: as it entered Egypt, its meaning was not fixed by its source but reconstructed within existing legal frameworks.Local intellectuals treated constitutionalism as a method of ordering authority. For ʿAbduh, constitutionalism was not foreign doctrine imposed from outside, but a disciplined rearticulation of governance grounded in Islamic legal reasoning, drawing on European constitutional vocabulary while determining its operative meaning from within.

  1. Kenneth J. Perkins, A History of Modern Tunisia, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 31–35. ↩︎
  2. Muḥammad ʿAbduh, al-Aʿmāl al-Kāmila, 5 vols., Beirut and Cairo: Dār al-Shurūq, 1993, 1:381–395; originally published as “Fī al-Shūrā wa-l-Istibḍād,” “Fī al-Shūrā,” and “Al-Shūrā wa-l-Qānūn,” al-Waqāʾiʿ al-Miṣriyya, nos. 1279, 1280, 1290 (12, 13, 25 December 1881). ↩︎
  3. Ibid., 1:381–395. ↩︎
  4. ʿAbduh, Aʿmāl, vol. 5, pp. 118–20. Qurʾān 3:159; translation adapted from Muṣṭafā Khaṭṭāb, The Clear Qurʾān: A Thematic English Translation, Book of Signs Foundation, 2016. ↩︎
  5. Abū Bakr Aḥmad b. ʿAlī al-Rāzī al-Jaṣṣāṣ, Aḥkām al-Qurʾān, Beirut: Dār Ibn Ḥazm, 2022, commentary on Q 3:159, pp. 583–585; Abū Bakr Muḥammad b. ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-ʿArabī, Aḥkām al-Qurʾān, 4 vols., Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al- ʿIlmiyya, vol. 1, commentary on Q 3:159, pp. 389–391. ↩︎
  6. Jaṣṣāṣ, Aḥkām, pp. 584, 585. ↩︎
  7. Ibid., p. 584. ↩︎
  8. Ibn al-ᶜArabī, Aḥkām, p. 389. ↩︎
  9. Ibid., pp. 389-390. ↩︎
  10. ʿAbduh, Aʿmāl, vol. 3, p. 197. ↩︎
  11. Muḥammad ʿAbduh, “Fī al-Shūrā wa-l-Istibḍād,” al-Waqāʾiʿ al-Miṣriyya, no. 1279, 12 December 1881, in al-Aʿmāl al-Kāmila, vol. 1, pp. 381–382. ↩︎
  12. Jiji Shimpō, “Kenpō happu uwasa no machimachi” 憲法發布うわさの區々, 11 Feb. 1889 (editorial), p. 17; and “Nihon Kokkai Engi” 日本国会縁起, 11 Feb. 1889, p. 20 (source of kokuran no ko 國亂の子), in Fukuzawa Yukichi zenshū(Complete works of Fukuzawa Yukichi), vol. 12, pp. 17–20, Tokyo: Iwanami, 1960. ↩︎

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Mujeeb Khan, "Constitution as Method in 1880s Egypt," ant.e, May 2026, https://ante-blog.univie.ac.at/article/constitution-as-method-in-1880s-egypt/